


Feline Fatale

by orphan_account



Series: The Eden Project [2]
Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Catboy!Hiro, Dystopia, M/M, THIS IS NOT THE CATBOY FIC YOU'RE LOOKING FOR, Violence, hurt/comfort kind...of, racial inequality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiro was a smart, independent feline, who didn’t need no man.</p><p>It just so happened that he rather liked this one, was all.</p><p>In which dystopian societies never go out of fashion, Hiro pulls a Garfield, and Tadashi should probably brush up on his understanding of feline social cues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feline Fatale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bewildebeest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bewildebeest/gifts).



* * *

 

**Everybody’s feeling that feline beat**

**‘Cause everything else is obsolete**

* * *

 

 

There was, supposedly, a curfew that his kind were meant to adhere to. Cut off from the rest of society like animals, their homesteads were little more than metal sheeting haphazardly slapped together at times, creating a tiny world of rudimentary huts and muddy, crowded laneways that stood out starkly from the neighbouring towers of steel and chrome, eating away at the sky like the monkeys inhabiting them had something to prove. They were the lords of this realm; masters of land and sea and sky, and no cat could ever hope to achieve that same comparison.

Monkeys were also very bad at locking their windows.

Which was their own fault for thinking a cat couldn’t climb five stories without a fire escape to rely on, Hiro reasoned. They couldn’t call it breaking and entering if nothing was _broken;_ it was just entering announced, like a neighbour who needed to borrow a cup of sugar, and sometimes left with all the leftovers in the fridge and a few items of clothing. Money was useless to someone like him; gold held little weight in a world where food was far more precious and stores wouldn’t accept ‘your kind’, and for that, the monkeys had something to be thankful for.

The owner of his favorite apartment especially, since they never seemed to be there. Taking money from them would have been as easy as raiding their fridge, which was a bounteous gift of half eaten meals and frozen dinners for one. Bachelor’s pad, as all the magazines he’d nicked from various newsstands would have titled it; messy, masculine and maroon. A lot of maroon. Maroon couch cushions. Maroon rug. Maroon bedspread. The ultimate accessory for the lazy man who might drop a few crumbs here and there, but didn’t necessarily have the will to vacuum more than twice a month, if that.

Hiro loved the place. Loved the fact that the window in was practically silent when opened, loved the fact that, nine times out of ten, someone forgot to turn their heating system off. More than once he’d settled in on the couch with a plate of food and given himself the luxury of _taking his sweet time,_  tail wrapped comfortably about his waist and ears perked towards the front door on the off chance that the locks rattled, announcing his immediate need to leap right back out the open window.

He and that couch went way back. In fact, tonight could just be another night to settle in.

Sliding the window up in its frame, Hiro leans inwards, listening out for any indications of life. The television was on in the apartment next to him; someone liked their late night soaps and kiddy porn. That aside…nothing. As usual.

Swinging himself in feet first, Hiro lands with the gentlest of thumps, padding across the well-worn rug with tail high and hands clasped behind his neck, humming tunelessly to himself. His arms were sore from sifting through the latest wreck to make its way to the car yard, mind thrumming with the success of finding so many parts in a mostly working condition that could be used about the place. His current storage space (a tiny little attic above the home of some lovely elderly folk who’d yet to notice their roof area had been…liberated) was crammed full of bits and pieces; some meant for light fixtures he’d installed about the place in the little shanty town called ‘home’, others ready to play around with. The books he had on mechanics could only take him so far; some of the words were completely beyond a self-taught reader, but what couldn’t be garnered from their pages (liberated from the library, much like everything else he owned) could always come with a little trial and error.

After food. Always after food. Tugging the collar of his shirt over his shoulder with one hand, he pulls open the fridge with a flourish- what delights awaited him, this fine evening.

Lasagna, the fridge answers him, and Hiro responds with a rumbling purr deep in the back of his throat before greedy fingers dig in, pulling chunks away from the plate to stuff into his mouth.

And that’s it. Just the quiet hum of the fridge, interrupted now and again as he licks his fingers, sucking them clean with wet, satisfied pops. His tail twitches back and forth in a dainty manner, posture entirely at ease, and Hiro can feel his shoulder aching as his usual tension creeps away.

He loves this place. It’s one of the only areas in his life where he can really, truly relax.

Which is why it’s so dangerous.

This has to be from a cafe; it doesn’t have the same frozen quality to it as many of the meals that have graced his palette before. There’s a softness to the pastry and a hint of spice to the meat that has Hiro foregoing any intentions of sitting down just to get as much of the meal into him as possible, pausing only to ensure sharp canines get every speck out from under his nails, washing sauce and grease from his fingers in an almost obsessive manner.

He almost doesn’t notice the bedroom door open. Which is to say, he definitely notices. Whipping his head around, his eyes make out the figure of a man almost perfectly in the low lighting; eyes wide and confused as he sways from whatever sleep still gripped his form, staring back at the cat framed by the tiny light emitting out of the open fridge door.

Rudely, the fridge beeps at him; a reminder to shut the door that goes completely ignored as Hiro puffs himself up and _hisses,_ launching himself over the counter and back into the lounge room, towards the open window. Towards freedom.

He’s _not_ going to The Pound for this.

“Hey-” Is all his unwitting benefactor manages to get out before Hiro gets out, skittering upwards before launching himself across the open space in a motion that takes his stomach out from under him- and almost rips his arms off when he collides with the edge of the window across the laneway. Scrambling up to crouch on the tiny lip between glass and a five story drop, the feline looks back, puffing up all the more at the monkey hanging out of his window, staring at him.

Rude, honestly.

He probably won’t be able to come back to this apartment block any time soon, Hiro considers as he makes his escape- accurately timed leaps with far more graceful landings, eventually touching down on the chain link fence at the end of the alleyway and balancing himself on the balls of his feet, taking one last resentful look upwards. The monkey is still watching on like it’s some kind of spectator sport, and Hiro shakes his head at him before making one last jump to the ground, and disappearing out of sight.

Shame. It really was his favorite.

 

* * *

 

Hiro couldn’t really bring himself to live in Shanty Town, as it’s occupants not quite affectionately called it. The scent of thousands of unwashed bodies and a common issue of clogged sewage pipes hit a cat on the nose like the force of a garbage truck; it wasn’t wholesome. It wasn’t healthy. There were plenty stuck here, however; cats with litters they couldn’t just abandon to the hard streets, who couldn’t easily be snuck into rarely used warehouses, basements or attics, and who didn’t understand the meaning of the word _quiet._ Older cats who had somehow lived long enough to feel their bones grow tired and old, not quite capable of the dangerous feats of climbing (and falling), that allowed the younger generation to spread about the city like an overly hungry swarm.

It was the best many could do right now. It was all some had, for the rest of their lives. And though most of his kind were notorious for going it solo on the adventures of their lives, everyone needed a central hub, a community. A port for business.

Even then, there were very few who could wrap their minds about machinery the way Hiro had. Every street lamp, running off of haphazardly built solar panels was his creation, the only reason that, when evening came, Shanty Town didn’t become one giant blot of darkness on San Fransokyo’s aerial map.

There were so many things they didn’t have access to here; so many things that were only five minutes away. Winging it like he did wasn’t enough; it didn’t even scratch the surface- but it’s what they had, and there were plenty around the place who got by without even knowing his name.

Those that did acknowledged him with the uncomfortable awareness that they owed him big time. It was hard to say which was more desirable.

He set up a makeshift shop against one of the larger sized huts, using the box he’d carried his gear in as a makeshift flooring to take the brunt of the mud. Containers of odd sizes, most missing their lids, lined the wall behind him, filled with those smaller odds and ends and covered with makeshift sticky tape lids that had all seen better days, and probably wouldn’t contain the contents within them if he held any of the tatty things upside down. In front of him were a few projects; useless lumps of metal until he’d worked his magic on them, and Hiro was able to pay only a moderate amount of attention to his surroundings, eyes and hands occupied as his ears swivelled back and forth, letting him know when he needed to swat someone’s leg for stepping on his precious board, carefully assessing the passing conversations about him for the barest hint of trouble.

None of this was important enough not to ditch the moment instincts told him to scarper.

Most of the morning passes as usual; he ignores the world, and the world ignores him. But a hush passes over everything around midday, and Hiro looks up to the sight of two Catchers rounding the corner, metal collars and batons swinging at their hips.

His ears flatten at the sight, eyes not straying from the pair as they make their way past, picking up pieces of their conversation as they go. Cats duck into open hovels that don’t belong to them rather than standing out in the street, activity only picking up after they’re long gone, though Hiro remains motionless, fingers frozen in a tight grip around his screwdriver- thrown away because the hilt had been snapped in half, at some stage.

Monkeys like that didn’t belong here. They’d created their pen; that didn’t make it an exhibition to walk through. Talking about lunch, too; like most of the people within earshot would ever see that particular meal in their lives.

They weren’t even monkeys, really. More like pigs.

Big, fat pigs, with skyscrapers of steel and chrome that cast a long shadow over Shanty Town as the afternoon wore on, the makeshift lights installed at the street corners flicking on long before the lights outside it did.

 

* * *

 

There’s a carton of milk on the window sill.

It can’t have been there too long; sitting in an ice bucket, the cubes haven’t even melted all the way, and the date on the brim of the cardboard assures Hiro that it’s not long been bought, either. It would seem entirely innocent, as far as ice buckets with cartons of milk in them set on the sills of five story windows go, but Hiro knows better.

If anything, he doesn’t even know why he came back. He just wanted-- the quiet of the place, again. Barely a night after being caught out, and here he was, claws dug into the mortar between the bricks of the building as he stares down at the apparent offering, because what else could it be?

He doesn’t know what that monkey was on, but this wasn’t the usual response to finding someone rifling through your fridge at one in the morning, Hiro was sure.

Ears flattening against his head, Hiro peers through the window, though the occupant is nowhere in sight. It’s late; later than it had been last night, but even so...it could be a trick. A trap, of sorts. It could be tampered with, poisoned….

Picking up the carton of milk, Hiro stops, and stares.

There’s an egg and lettuce sandwich stuffed into the bottom of the bucket. In spite of himself, the feline snorts, cocking a brow at the bewildering gift this monkey seemed happy to throw at him- brain damage, that’s what it was. Brain damage; no harm intended.

He takes the carton and leaves the sandwich; he has _standards,_ and an egg and lettuce sandwich do not meet them. Meat them, rather.

To add insult to injury, he takes the bucket, as well.

The next night, the monkey sees the light, and gives him a container of lasagna, instead. That, Hiro can’t say no to.

 

* * *

 

 

If there’s anything Hiro wished for more than anything in the world, it was to have a better understanding of the machinery and components he worked with on a daily basis. He liked tinkering and playing about, but to actually know what he was doing. To be capable of putting things together with a clear understanding of precisely what would happen. To make things that always _worked_ the way he wanted.

Wishes like that drove Hiro around the bend. There were very few cats who could read, and even less who tinkered away like he did. It wasn’t unrealistic to consider himself the only one of his profession in his own species, and the frustration that came with constantly diving into the unknown was what drove him to read his books over and over again. Yellow from exposure to the elements, ink smeared past the point of readability in some places; they were as tatty as they came, and completely worthless to anyone but him.

Hiro liked to think of them as his secret weapon. His favorite, however, was the one with diagrams. Because sometimes, he recognised things he used in the drawings. Sometimes he came across a name, and a whole world opened up to him on how they could be used...and his understanding got a little bigger.

Not today, apparently.

The sun is more interesting than the pages he’s leafing through, hitting the window against his back and sending a pleasant heat through the fabric of his clothing as the alleyway enjoys its brief time in the sunlight, midday erasing any hint of shadows and leaving Hiro feeling lazy and tired. The monkey had left more food out for him, this morning; milk and a bowl of chicken, already demolished and left to heat in the sun. He’d been making use of the cartons, replacing several of his containers full of nuts and bolts out. They made for easier travel, that’s for sure; if he’d wanted to, he could start carting a few more projects in his cardboard box, but…mm. There was only so much time in the day.

Only so much sunlight to enjoy.

He’s almost asleep when there’s a gentle tap on the glass behind him; monkey’s home, and waving at him. Hiro narrows his eyes at the man before proceeding to ignore him, uninterested in whatever antics the man had up his sleeve. He hadn’t called The Pound on him yet, and that was about as far as the danger went.

A week, and the stupid thing seemed happy to lounge on the couch and watch him eat, or laze about. Now that Hiro had the food outside, there was no reason to try and get in; but he had to admit he was a little envious. That couch was comfortable, as experience had taught him.

The tapping comes again, a little more insistent, this time. Hiro flicks his tail up in a dismissive, irritated gesture, but the monkey just doesn’t know when to give up. He wants his attention, today.

Once he has it, the man holds something up for Hiro to see. A book. Hiro squints at it, then at his face, frowning suspiciously when he gets a smile in return. It’s placed on the edge of the couch as the monkey backs away, heading into his room and shutting the door. _Brain damaged,_ obviously.

Still, he leans over to the side, slightly; enough to cast a glare over the book’s shiny surface as he mouths the title to himself quizzically, ears standing upright in surprise once it registers.

_A Beginner’s Guide to Mechanics_

He waits two minutes before opening the window, eyes on the bedroom door even as he slinks inside and snatches the book up from the floor. It’s slammed shut behind him with a loud snap, and he’s not about to keep sitting there after confirming for the stupid thing that his window does, indeed, open, but once he’s found a new place atop the roof to get comfortable, the contents within the thick volume are eaten by increasingly greedy eyes.

_He gets everything it’s telling him._

 

* * *

 

 

For a month, things...get better. They get better by leaps and bounds, and Hiro feels like a fucking _hero_ as he fixes every single light he’d installed in Shanty Town, making them burn brighter for longer. He lets himself in uninvited into hovels belonging to families of hollow eyed children and watches the way their faces light up in wonder when he’s finished carving holes into their ceilings, fixing lightbulbs into new fixtures and wordlessly showing them how the switch he affixes to the wall turns the tiny glass orb on and off. The world starts getting lighter; warmer.

He spends five days building a communal cooking station from scratch and watches with burning eyes as cats discover how to cook their food over something that isn’t open flame. He plugs his nose with rags soaked in off vinegar and adds tiny implements to the sewage pipes running above ground, and the world gets a little _cleaner._

Anonymously, he dumps three weeks of work into the homes of cats with even the vaguest of medical knowledge; defibrillators and hand held lights and little, beeping machines that could _save lives_ and the world becomes that much _safer._

The monkey places book after book on the window sill with his food, and Hiro’s started to read before he even thinks to eat, hunched over on his little slab stories above the ground as his world expands into robotics and medicine, mathematics and architecture.

This was there the whole time. This whole time, it’s been at his fingertips- and the monkeys kept it away. Hidden in their towers of chrome and steel like some amazing secret, rather than a vast new world that deserved to be shared.

His name was on the lips of every single cat he passed, and there was nothing but reverence there, grudging acceptance of his help washed away as people found _community_ in his actions, solidarity.

A little girl gives him a jacket; barely worn and fuzz still soft and warm, before running back to her mother like it was nothing.

Hiro was well aware that he was making radical changes for his kind; and god help him, he had no idea what that feeling was called. That building momentum of fire and spirit that had him walking differently than before, head high and arms almost constantly piled with some new contraption that had cats _parting in the fucking streets for him_ , like he was actually someone who deserved to be given way to.

He felt...empowered.

And inevitably, there was only one way that was going to go.

It happens when the sun is shining, of course. When it’s high in the air and he’s ready to start his day, mind awash with the concepts he was currently working on. Wheelchairs; he knew them. Seen them about, and now and again a rickety one made it’s way into the garbage, a wheel missing or twisted beyond reason, unworkable and unneeded. But he could get them working again; he could. And maybe he could scrounge enough together that the people who needed them most could get one; or at the very least, the medical centres, magical places that seemed to be appearing up over Shanty Town seemingly overnight.

Cats were starting to help each other, and he’d was going to help them do it.

His ears pick up shrill screams of fear, and his head moves towards the sound in spite himself. He’s not even in Shanty Town yet; simply on the verges of it; muddy fields that usually found themselves occupied by legions of small children, content to play with their imaginations and nothing else. He wouldn’t have noticed if not for the sound. A month ago, he would’ve known better, and kept his head down.

Today, however, he sees a Catcher raising his baton against a little girl who couldn’t even be half Hiro’s height, and his seemingly wide open world narrows to a pinprick.

 

* * *

 

Bachelor’s pad, as all the magazines he’d nicked from various newsstands would have titled it; messy, masculine and maroon. A lot of maroon. Maroon couch cushions. Maroon rug. Maroon bedspread. The ultimate accessory for the lazy man who might drop a few crumbs here and there, but didn’t necessarily have the will to vacuum more than twice a month, if that.

Hiro loved the place. Loved the fact that the window in was practically silent when opened, loved the fact that, nine times out of ten, someone forgot to turn their heating system off. More than once he’d settled in on the couch with a plate of food and given himself the luxury of _taking his sweet time,_  tail wrapped comfortably about his waist and ears perked towards the front door on the off chance that the locks rattled, announcing his immediate need to leap right back out the open window.

He and that couch went way back. In fact, tonight could just be another night to settle in.

It had taken him half an hour to scale up the wall outside, and ten minutes to open the window. Hiro doesn’t even know why he’s here; but the world pitches and tilts, and before he knows it, he’s laying out over the maroon rug on the floor, blinking spots out of his eyes as he stares down at his arm.

Caked in maroon. It clashes with the colour of the rug, staining it darker than it already is.

He doesn’t know why he’s here.

His world is still a pinprick. Captured in fragments of motions, from dumping his gear on the ground, to taking the brunt of the baton against his own shoulder. He doesn’t like pain; he _hates pain._ Reflex had his hand lashing out, claws digging deep gouges into a face that _squealed._ Squealed like a pig.

Who brings a gun to a playground?

 

Who brings a gun to a playground?

 

The bedroom door opens, and Hiro doesn’t have the energy to turn his face towards it, tail thwacking against the hardwood floor at the hissed out gasp of shock the monkey makes when it takes him in.

He hears the commotion more than sees it. Hears the man running into his bathroom, unknown objects hitting the floor in his rush to do whatever it is he’s doing before the monkey is kneeling at his side, and his voice is _scared._ Murmuring to him in a slow, careful manner- _Answer me. Look at me. Hey- look at me._

There’s spot in his eyes, but the feline can still see the expression on his face when his head is turned by a firm hand. Barely contained panic and rage, clashing with some cool mask of knowing what to do when faced with a cat bleeding out on his maroon rug, like he’s seen it a thousand times over.

“You need to tell me where it hurts. I’m not going to move you until I know, but you’ve got to _talk to me._ ”

Arm. Hiro can feel it in his arm, a _burn_ that’s racing straight up his shoulder and down his spine, and he chokes on his own bile when he’s helped upright and propped back against the couch. The monkey pulls out a pocket knife, and Hiro watches through lidded eyes as the sleeve of his hoodie is cut away; it’s useless now. A gift; the only piece of clothing he’s ever received. The only gift he’s ever had aside from books that the monkey never seemed to mind him never bringing back, and packages of food that had somehow become breakfast and dinner, sometimes lunch, when Hiro wanted nothing more than to read the day away-

“Ss’tupid.” He tells the man, and the dirt on his cheeks streaks with tears. The monkey doesn’t ask him what he means; he’s too busy looking at his arm, at the hole.

“You were shot.” The monkey says. As if Hiro hadn’t already had plenty of time to come to that conclusion on his own. He watches him rock back on his heels, and Hiro’s still wondering to himself why he came here.

Shanty Town was **burning.**

His world was **_burning._**

And he was here.

“I love th’s place.” Hiro finds himself murmuring. How the words are actually getting past his thick tongue and tight throat, he doesn’t know, but they’re there. “I love it. Don’...have nowhere else. Maroon.”

He loves this place. And that’s why it’s so dangerous.

He can’t think of any other maroon rugs and couches he’d rather bleed out on, messy and masculine. It had always smelt wonderful in here; a world away from what he knew and what he’d been brought up on, a respite from _life._

“It’s okay.” The monkey says to him; he’s pulling a needle out of his white box, shaking hands struggling to fill it with liquid from a small bottle. “It’s okay; I’m glad you came. I’m so glad you came; let’s get you fixed up, alright? This is lidocaine; have you read about that, yet?”

The feline’s sure he has. Maybe. That doesn’t make it any more pleasant when the thin metal is pushed into his arm, and he yowls miserably, shaking like a leaf as his breath escapes him in harsh, shallow pants. Shock. He’s read about shock.

Forceps push into his arm a minute later; when his arm is already pleasantly numbed, but watching it is still something else. As stupid as the monkey is, he keeps his hands steady enough, whispering apologies as Hiro tenses, tail lashing in erratic motions. The bullet comes out caked in blood, and there’s a tense moment as the monkey holds it up into the light, searching for something.

Whatever he finds he likes, though that’s not so much reassuring as it is concerning. He gets a quick, thin lipped smile for his pained note of caution, and once again he’s left to wait as the man sorts through his box of medical goods, piled high with things Hiro’s never seen sterile before.

“It’s whole; all we have to do is stitch it up.” He tells him quietly, pressing a piece of gauze to the feline’s arm to staunch the sluggish trail of blood oozing from the hole. Up until this point, being shot hasn’t really been the worst. Perhaps that was something to do with shock, or adrenalin- a mixture of the two and his refusal to actually pay attention to it. He’s had plenty of burns on his fingers before, tinkering or fixing this or that with food or new clothes as the reward, and it was easy to liken it to that. A persistent, burning pain.

Now it’s more of a ‘every time his heart beats _agony ripples through his soul’_ kind of deal. His breathing is ragged, clutching the coffee table with his good hand and bowing over it in an attempt not to curl up and start licking the wound feverishly; it needs to be closed, not grazed over with a rough tongue until he makes the bleeding twice as bad as it already is.

Lips pressing into a thin line, he doesn’t bother with words; what matters is that the monkey actually knows what he’s doing, leaving his side briefly to soak a dish towel in lukewarm water to carefully run across his arm, cleaning off most of the blood.

Hiro could swear that all he does is blink. Blink, and there’s blue on his arm; neat stitches in a blue thread that hold the wound shut before it disappears under wooly dressing and white bandages.

“You’re not well enough to leave tonight.” The monkey is still talking to him; like Hiro is registering it all. Words firm, holding a note of careful finality to them; he’s expecting an argument. The feline realises belatedly that this is the first time they’ve been on the same side of the glass together since that first night he’d been caught out- it’s the first time he’s said a word. The second time the monkey’s said a word. “I’m going to pick you up, okay? You’re staying here.”

Hiro rumbles at him, tensing as an arm loops under his knees and behind his back. The monkey picks him up like he’s nothing, still talking a mile a minute, and for the first time he can smell him through the blood.

He smells like the apartment.

Or the apartment smells like him.

One of the two as the monkey carefully arranges him in his lap, lips moving in a blur of words as he urges Hiro to open his mouth and swallow down small pieces of chalk that taste like they’ve seen better days, helping him sip at water until the taste is mostly gone. And he smells like the apartment; like mess. Masculine and maroon.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

Hiro doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he’s here, his entire world **_burning._** He doesn’t know why he’s here, in an apartment that smells like a man and a man that smells like an apartment.

What he does know is that he buries his nose into the monkey’s neck, and never remembers making it to the bed.


End file.
